The nature of reality

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I keep confusing people by making statements that make it unclear whether my “belief system” is monotheistic, polytheistic, or something else entirely. I usually answer those concerns by stating that there is a big difference between what I perceive, and the imagery I use to explain things to others. However, I never actually bothered to try and formulate my “reality map”, at least in a form more concise than a book. This is going to be difficult, which is why I’ve been procrastinating, but some recent developments made me believe it will actually be useful for me to attempt writing it all down. You see, it recently became clear to me that I’ve been processing a significant karmic burden that requires me to gradually work through darkness and ignorance and toward something that was clear to me for decades, but I had to “forget” it, in order to break my way towards it again, from the position of ignorance defined by the karmic burden that is placed upon me. To pre-empt the question, I don’t know what it is, but it’s big.

Enough dillydallying. I was thinking about the appropriate literary form for this, and I think it would be best to write it down in the Yoga Sutra form, essentially by stating a brief definition and then elaborate on it in commentary. This way I can keep it both mathematically concise and elaborate at the same time, without watering down the essential thought with necessary explanations. I will write the commentary later, if necessary.

 

1 This world’s reality is derived.
2 The deeper reality, from which this world derives its own reality, is not ultimate.
3 The tree of derived realities is not endless and has a finite number of branches and layers.
4 There is the ultimate, Absolute reality, which is the fullness of being-consciousness-bliss, from which all lesser realities derive their positive qualities, by means of reduction and filtration.
5 The derived realities simultaneously do and do not exist separately from the Absolute. The entire relative (non-Absolute) existence is a fundamental paradox.
6 To manifest the attributes of deeper reality is to partake in the deeper reality.
7 Manifestation of deeper reality exists on a spectrum, on kalapa-level.
8 Kalapas can aggregate into larger structures.
9 Aggregation of kalapas is constrained by the ratio of repulsive and attractive forces.
10 Growth of an aggregate structure can be both quantitative and qualitative.
11 Quantitative growth is attained by expansion on the same level of reality. Qualitative growth is attained by initiation into a deeper level of reality.
12 To extend oneself is to grow quantitatively. To transcend oneself is to grow qualitatively. Both are essential.
13 A structure that contradicts reality by its choices and existence breaks down into lesser fragments due to repulsive internal forces exceeding the attractive ones.
14 A structure is homogenous if all its constituent kalapas are of the same quality and the forces between them are equally strong. If the constituent kalapas are not all of the same quality, if there are blocks of isotropic karmic substances separated by inclusions of lower quality, or if the energy binding the particles or isotropic blocks are of unequal strength, the structure is heterogenous, unbalanced and fragmented.
15 The fact that a structure is maintained within the mind of God, doesn’t make it of God.
16 That part is up to you. The stable choices are to be of God, by choosing more and deeper reality, or to dissipate into nothingness, where repulsive forces between the kalapas of one’s spiritual substance overpower the attractive ones, and one’s identity essentially degrades.
17 One can say that God was in the beginning. One can also say that God as Absolute emanates into Gods as relative beings that are fully of God as Absolute, at once singular and plural, and yet God doesn’t change. This is a great mystery and cannot be fully known.
18 God is the beginning beyond all things, and has to be chosen, again and again, by every thought and action, consistently and with increasing depth of immersion and comprehension, in order to be a personal destiny. There are many paths and many outcomes, and there is immense diversity among those who became Gods by being of God. There is even greater diversity of misery and woe among those who chose to oppose reality-consciousness-bliss by their choices and actions.
19 It is difficult to say how particular worlds came to be, because human mind thinks in terms of time and space, and both began with the creation of this particular world. To think in terms of other-time and other-space, before space and time, is not really possible for a spatiotemporally constrained mind.
20 There are many things in this world that were made by men, and not by God. There are even more things that were made by nuclear processes in stars, supernova explosions and isotope decay, and by the chemical and biochemical processes, also not by God. It is therefore not reasonable to assume that this world itself necessarily needed to be created, or even designed by God. To blame God for the nature of this world makes as much sense as blaming stars for the existence of deadly earthquakes, because they created the heavy elements that are a prerequisite of organic life.
21 There are much better worlds that allow for much greater freedom and beauty, that preceded the existence of this one. This world looks like something that was created by taking a higher-world template, and reducing the light of God that is allowed to emanate through it and be perceived by the souls bound to it, down to the very point of endless darkness. Essentially, it’s the worst world that can still theoretically exist. If it were any worse, no consciousness could manifest within it, and it would thus be better.
22 This mockery of a world does not need to be improved, in order for something better to exist. Something vastly better existed long before it was conceived. It needs to be destroyed because it is an abomination and mockery of God’s creation. Its existence, as I see it, is a result of evil intent of one being, negligence of another, and is in strong opposition to those who anticipated the evils that will inevitably arise.
23 It is difficult to say how old this world is, because there are many ways of looking at time. From one perspective, time is measured by causality of events within a world. From another perspective, time exists only if an observer perceives change. In-universe time started with the first consciousness that was bound to the world and perceived it from within. Before that, there is no reason to assume that any outside time had to pass.
24 Some say that this world is designed to promote spiritual evolution. Why is it, then, that one short moment of transcendental, outworldly experience, makes one a profoundly spiritual person, and a whole life devoid of such experiences, with worldly experiences alone, makes one the opposite of spiritual? This world promotes spirituality in the same ways in which butchery promotes cows.
25 As a great paradox, this world is many layers of reality separated from God. It is also designed to reduce the light of God so greatly, that it is almost impossible to see God as the fundamental driving force. And yet, it is as separate from God as dreamer from a dream, or any piece of software running on a computer, from CPU and RAM. The paradox of being completely separate from God while dwelling within the mind and being of God, is as excruciating as it is not comforting. It is a nightmare one cannot wake up from, and the fact that it is not ultimately real does not help.
26 The fact that something is not ultimately real does not make it any less of a problem.
27 The fact that God is the fundamental reality within and beyond all things doesn’t mean that there are no real problems, or that God is omnipotent, in a sense that He can do anything. God can make choices that preclude other choices. God can give beings individuality and autonomy, and even make pledges and promises that make it extremely difficult to work around and mitigate bad outcomes. Things look very simple at the most fundamental level of reality, where only I Am, but they get immensely complicated as one follows the branches of Yggdrasil outwards.
28 The tree of the world has its root in the Absolute, but on some of its branches there are leaves of madness and evil. It is true that those are destined to fall off due to their opposition to the fundamental truth of all things, but that is a matter of time, and time can seem like eternity if you are tortured in a dungeon by the enemies of God.
29 God did not forget you, who are bound and deluded by this nightmare of a world. You are remembered as you truly are, and the very existence of God will assure that you are not lost.
30 Those, however, who sided with the forces of this world that obscure the memory of God and the light beyond, will regret being born at all. Those who chose the darkness willingly, and used it against others with joyful glee; they exist, but they will also live to regret that fact.
31 The destiny of those who built their existence out of meditation on God, is beyond any worldly comprehension. They are eternity in time and space, and they the ultimate paradox of a relative God that is a localized totality, at the same time Everything, yet individual and particular something and someone, the totality of One in the many. Such ultimate destiny is great beyond any thought, dream or hope.
32 God is the great challenge, in every thought and action. So close, and yet who can say, “I am what God would be, I am doing what God would do”?
33 Yet, it is possible and can be achieved. Many have done it. Others have excuses.

My opinion on the current Pope

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I understand that there is some interest in my opinion regarding the current Pope.

First of all, I must write disclaimers. I am of the opinion that this is an internal affair of the Catholic Church, and that they should completely disregard any and all outsiders in such matters. One of the main mistakes the Church has been making, in my opinion, is to take into consideration the opinions of those who are not Catholics, nor wish to become so, regardless of any changes the Church were to introduce to its doctrine and practice. The Church should, in my opinion, pay attention only to its own most holy members, and completely disregard any call for “reforms” that come from the outside. As far as the outsiders are concerned, the Church could become a socialist gay club and change the official flag of Vatican to the rainbow one, and it still wouldn’t be enough, because next it would be pressured to accept Muhammad as a prophet and Qur’an as a holy scripture.

And this is where we come to my opinion, which should be taken by the Church with all the reservations due when considering opinions of outsiders.

I perceived Benedict as a holy person even before he was elected Pope. There is air of spirituality, power and subtlety that makes me smile and be glad that the Church has a truly holy man at its head. Whether Catholics would interpret this as my confirmation that he was truly anointed by the Holy Spirit, is beside the point. That’s what I perceived and I can testify to that. With Francis, I feel revulsion. He is spiritually empty, dry, and I feel instinctual dislike of him even when he is, formally speaking, correct in some matter, because a person so drastically lacking any kind of holiness can hardly improve religious doctrine. I also feel great contempt for his vapid demagoguery and pandering to the enemies of the Church at the expense of its traditionalist believers.

I think Benedict tried to weed out some terrible aberrations from the Church, and found such opposition to his efforts that he simply gave up, surrendered the fate of Church to God, and devoted his life to prayer. If the Catholics want to interpret my opinion in the matter as considering Benedict the true Pope, and Francis the antipope, I would consider it close enough to the truth and wouldn’t express significant opposition to such interpretation. I would also not object if my words were interpreted to mean that Benedict is a saintly person and Francis is a godless demon. That is also close enough to my opinion for me not to object.

Essentially, it is my position that ideological differences do not preclude my support to some religious organization if it strives to attain something that I perceive as spiritually valuable. I also feel sadness if positive efforts of others are thwarted, or if I see evil thriving.

This should of course not be interpreted as interference into the internal affairs of others, but since I felt some Catholics wondering about my opinion in this matter, I decided it is for the best if I just write it down and offer it as such.

About exceptions

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There are several things I saw people do in online conversations that annoy me, because they think they are using arguments, and they are in fact committing logical fallacies.

The first one is citing exceptions to disprove a rule. They will cite a smart black man and a retarded Asian in an attempt to disprove statistical findings about race and intelligence. They will find a woman who managed to give birth in late 30s, or one who is happily unmarried in her 60s, they will find a quiet Italian and a loudmouth German, or a Lesbian that actually doesn’t hate men, and say “gotcha”. To that, my answer is that sociology isn’t mathematics. In mathematics, if you state there are no even primes, and I cite number 2, your theory is disproved and that’s the end of it. However, even in mathematics, there’s statistics and probability. In statistics, citing a sample of 1 in order to invalidate a rule is worthless. Let me use an example.

This is a dark image. It was intentionally shot as such, and histogram shows a statistical distribution of pixel luminance values. On the left side are the pixels with values closer to 0, which means black, and on the right side are the pixels with values closer to 255, which means white.

What the political left wants us all to believe, under threat of violence, is that you can’t say that an image is dark just because the luminance values are grouped in the left side of the histogram, as long as there are any white pixels on the picture. You can’t say that a cat is black if they can find one white hair on it, basically. But on the other hand, if you disagree with them about absolutely anything, essentially if your agreement with their ideology is less than the perfect 100%, you are a Nazi. That’s fundamentally intellectually dishonest; essentially, they are using logical fallacies and counting on the fact that most people are only vaguely familiar with logic, and they heard somewhere that you can disprove rules by citing exceptions, only they don’t understand that this doesn’t necessarily apply even in mathematics, because statistical analysis was developed exactly for the purpose of dealing with exceptions to rules. That’s why sociology uses statistics to formulate statements about human groups. Similarly to that picture, if some human group has a median value of 6 in 0..255 range, you can say it’s very “dark”. It’s basically how the biblical God saw Sodom. It’s the case where white pixels don’t disprove the rule, they prove it, because if you can basically count them all by hand, it says something.

The second thing that irritates me is citing your personal experience to disprove some general rule. It’s statistically worthless because it’s a sample of 1. Also, every substance addict I talked to used the same argument: I’m drinking alcohol or using drugs all the time and I’m feeling great. First of all, your subjective experience is most likely just your personal delusion – the consequences might just not have caught up with you. Second, even if it were not, you might be a severely abnormal specimen – for instance, some people are resistant to AIDS and never contract the disease because they have a genetic mutation that renders them immune. Third, it still isn’t necessarily a good idea. For instance, someone can say he was drunk and jumped from the hotel room on the second floor, landed in a pool and was fine. That doesn’t prove it’s a good idea. Rather, it proves that some people have more luck than one should reasonably expect. So, essentially, I shit on your personal experience.

The third thing is that some people think feeling is an argument. They feel something therefore it must be true, or I must at least accept that they are validated in their feeling-based opinion. That’s actually true in some cases, for instance if someone isn’t sexually attracted to you, that’s all the reason they need in order not to have sex with you. Asking them to provide evidence is actually a fallacy, because you assume evidence is needed. It is not. If someone doesn’t like you, they don’t need reasons to not like you. But this is an exception to the general rule. You can’t use this argument for medications, and say that a certain substance comes in an ugly box that you don’t like, and you’ll therefore not take it. You can’t say your school professor rubs you the wrong way and you therefore won’t accept his grades. You can’t say you don’t like police uniforms and you will therefore not obey the law. In most cases, your emotions are irrelevant and nobody should care about them. Your idiosyncrasies are your problem, and have no place in a discussion. If you think something is true, you need to be able to provide arguments in favor of your opinion. Feeling a certain way is not an argument. So, essentially, I shit on your feelings. If you have strong feelings in favor of a demonstrably false concept, it’s not evidence in favor of it, it’s evidence that you’re a fucked up person.

Manipulated markets and war

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How can you tell a certain commodity market is being manipulated? It’s when supply is restricted, demand is enormous, and the prices are not rising. It means someone, usually the huge buyers, is influencing the markets by complicated and marginally legal means in order to keep the prices affordable for themselves. In my opinion, that’s what we have been seeing in the precious metals market in the last few months. The central banks and other big players have been buying unprecedented quantities, including the future production, and the prices have been dropping. I have a pretty good idea how some of it is being done, and even I am quite shocked at the amount of fuckery involved.

Also, we are approaching the upper limit of my prediction, because 3 months ago I said I expect the thing to blow up in the time interval of 15 days to 3 months. This was based on the expectation that the American stock market is in a hugely unstable bubble, that the central banks and other buyers will quickly exhaust the physical metal supply and this will in turn collapse the unbacked paper market, which worked thus far only because the bluff hadn’t been called. In the mean time, the fed has been printing money like crazy, and it’s been going into the American stock market, basically trying to prop it up in order to stabilize the house of cards. Also, overnight borrowing by the banks is huge, which indicates serious liquidity issues. In essence, the visible metal prices seem to invalidate my prognosis, but I think it’s just a matter of time before this house of card collapses, and I’m actually not in a great hurry to revise my time estimates, I think we’re still on the same schedule. I’ve seen very similar patterns in 2007. Marketplace was behaving contrary to the underlying realities seemingly disproving them, until it went poof.

I’m still buying silver with all the money I can spare each month, and I still recommend it to others. If the banks are buying metal instead of paper, contrary to their long-standing custom, it means paper is going to shit. Already, bets are being made on gold exceeding $4000 by summer of 2021. Some people say someone is betting high and will probably lose money. I say somebody is betting on a certain thing in a marketplace of asshats. A major constraint on my prognosis is that this time the financial collapse will be so big, it might cause the major players to pre-empt it with a nuclear war, seeing it as a preferable option. In fact, that’s what I’ve been warning about for years already; American intentional aggravation of the geopolitical situation makes no sense in any other context. Also, America is in the overture phase of a very nasty civil war for the last 3 years, with Obama-appointed people in the intelligence agencies acting as some sort of an insurgency that is trying to negate the results of the presidential elections, sabotage the executive branch of government, and, most importantly, control the media in order to propagandize their own populace. They actually revoked a law that used to prohibit that, so that everything would be legal.

When a significant part of a nation is refusing to accept the election results, using all kinds of excuses, that’s when you know the democratic system collapsed and the country descended into banana-republic stage. The level of political discourse in America is something I am used to seeing in African shitholes, but not in serious countries. It’s basically all at the point where the sides are so far apart in fundamental issues, they can no longer be said to belong to the same civilization, let alone nation. When this war gets hot, it’s going to be worse than Bosnia and Rwanda.

New Apple stuff

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Apple recently released the new 16″ laptop, and it’s a significant improvement over the fail-fest that’s been going on since 2016. Still a reduced selection of ports, still cooling any plasticky gaming laptop would easily surpass, but there’s the ESC key again, and the keyboard is no longer that terrible breakable thing.

However, I lost a whole day of vacation fixing the mess Catalina update made on my mid-2015 15″ retinabook, having disabled 32-bit code, which made Virtualbox not run, macports initially didn’t run so I had to wait for an update, GPG didn’t run, Synergy didn’t run, and half of other stuff either didn’t work, or had to be updated. Stuff that had no updates was a problem, but I replaced most of everything with open source stuff compiled from the macports library, but it left me wondering what would happen if Apple did another “upgrade” and simply blocked macports or at least its access to the xcode compiler. That would render the computer completely unusable to me. Also, something seems to be broken with the Virtualbox guest VGA driver, and so much of the functionality I relied upon was broken by that single update (including my mail archive no longer syncing due to Apple making “improvements” to the mail application, forcing me to get a paid upgrade for the archiving software) that I got incredibly pissed.

Also, after having used it for years I decided that the 15″ laptop is too big for what I normally use it for, which is to put it in my lap and write articles. The keyboard is too far away, the whole thing is too big and unwieldy, and the only plus is the screen and the speed. With everything else, I was able to get much more comfortable with my old 13″ Air, so I don’t think I’ll be getting another big laptop again, especially since I’ve been using an ultralight Asus (Zenbook Flip UX370UA) for half a year or so and I happen to be using it much more frequently than I do the big Macbook, and only due to a much more practical size, at least for what I use it for. Also, Microsoft integrated Linux into the Win10, so now I have full access to the CLI tools that I normally use even without OS X or virtualization, which makes Windows machines very usable to me, as usable as Macs. Sure, I can write text messages or pick up a phone call from the Macbook, which makes it very convenient at times, and the Macbook screen and touchpad are still significantly superior to anything non-Apple, but the gap is decreasing due to Apple screwing up increasingly more, and others doing increasingly more things right.

The Windows laptops still have significant problems. First, almost everything has a 16:9 screen ratio, which is terrible for small laptop screens; it starts making sense from 17″ upwards. Second, touchpads on Windows laptops range from significantly worse than Apple, to absolute garbage. Third, Windows has a nasty habit of not completing the suspend command if some process refuses to respond, which leads to closing the laptop that is still actually on, merrily overheating and draining your battery in the bag. This makes Windows behave terribly on laptops. Also, Win10 constantly updates, which makes it incredibly annoying after a while. Honestly, I don’t want to even see anything updating other than the antivirus. It can update itself twice a year and that’s it. The only improvement introduced by those updates was the WSL, everything else was cosmetics and had no business rebooting my system. Microsoft should seriously reduce the frequency of updates because this is getting on everybody’s nerves. However, other than that, Win10 is fine. It’s fast, it’s elegant, it’s comfortable to use, and for the most part it’s as reliable as Mac OS, and much more reliable than any Linux desktop. Essentially, Apple is one serious fuckup away from me switching completely to Windows/Linux combo. On the other hand, Windows was always one serious fuckup away from me switching to Mac/Linux combo, so things are quite equally matched now.